The overall purpose of this project is to relate cellular function to perception and behavior. The mammalian laboratory will continue to develop a psychophysically based account of somatosensory spatial interactions by utilizing similar paradigms in studies of both humans and experimental animals. We hope to correlate the psychophysical and electrophysiological findings and to elucidate the temporal features of the interactions we have found. We then plan to extend these studies of position-sensitive channels to an analysis of submodality and feature selective channels, using these same paradigms to assess the relative independence of such channels and the specificity of their inhibitory actions of each other. The invertebrate laboratory will continue to examine the rules that relate the biophysical properties of neurons and their patterns of interconnections to behavior. A major focus in future work will be to examine how different components of a complex response pattern are integrated. BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES: Iwamura, Y., and W.A. Spencer. Functional connections of thalamocortical relay cells within the ventrobasal complex of cat. In: The Somatosensory System, editor H.H. Kornhuber, Stuttgart: George Thieme, 270-276, 1975. Janig, W., W.A. Spencer, and S. Younkin. Transformation of transient mechanical stimuli in the dorsal column lemniscal system. First European Neurosci. Mtg., Exp. Brain Res., 1975.